Synopsis
In this second installment of The Anna Romano Mystery Series, Anna gets herself into a mess that lands her in hot water with the prime suspect and her new Beau, Detective John Solace. Their new romance was going great, when all in the sudden, a simple trip to the grocery store turned into wrestling match between two scorned women. Peeking her interest for a juicy story, Anna’s snooping to find out more about the seemingly ‘innocent’ love triangle, catapulted her into the middle of a murder investigation. The murder weapon of choice? A red stiletto…conspicuously pointing the police in the direction of a female assailant. No one knows whether the adulterating husband killed his wife to avoid a costly divorce, or if his mistress killed her in a fit of jealousy and rage. While the detectives are convinced the husband is the ‘killer’, it seems Anna’s faith in his innocence may be in vain, as additional bodies, and mistresses, keep piling up. Meanwhile, Anna’s publicist, Shirlene, tries to convince Anna to leave the detective work to the police, but, as usual, falls on deaf ears. In the end, not even a pan of lasagne and a neighbourly smile could save Anna! Find out in ‘A Bloody Stiletto, Cold Lasagne, and a Bestseller’ if Detective Solace will be able to handle Anna’s crazy antics, or if he will make her vow to stay OUT of the realm of ‘Murder and Mayhem’ once and for all.
My Review
I have a little confession to make. Yes yet another one. Prior to being invited to take part in the blog tour for ‘A Bloody Stiletto, Cold Lasagne & A Bestseller’, I hadn’t actually come across Cheryl Denise Bannerman before. I am sooooo glad that I was invited to take part because through this invite I have discovered another great author. Oh my word I flipping loved reading ‘A Bloody Stiletto, Cold Lasagne & A Bestseller’ but more about that in a bit.
What can I say about Anna Romano? She sounds just my sort of person. She is a good cook, has a boyfriend who loves her to pieces, she writes a column for her local paper, she loves a good gossip and her nosiness sometimes gets her into trouble. Anna loves to play at being an amateur detective, much like Jessica Fletcher, and Anna has a knack for sourcing information that the police are unable to. Like I said, just my kind of person. I couldn’t help but take to and warm to the character of Anna from the start. As soon as I began to learn more about her, I just knew that Anna would feel like a friend of mine by the tie I got to the end of the book and so it proved to be.
Oh my word, this was one seriously good book that certainly blew away the looming Monday blues. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the book at first because I couldn’t quite understand how a murder mystery could possibly be funny. I needn’t have worried because this book certainly mixes the serious with the humorous. There were certain parts of the book that made me gasp and there were other parts of the book that made me chuckle away to myself. The scene inside the supermarket and the wrecking of the display made me chuckle as I could visualise it happening inside my head and the ridiculousness of it.
I soon got into this story and I soon became addicted to reading it. The book is relatively short in length as are the chapters so it didn’t take me too long to get through the book. The chapters ended in such a way that compelled me (in a nice way) to carry on reading to the next chapter and beyond. I lost all sense of time whilst reading this book and I got through the book far quicker than I realised. The more I read, the more into the story I became and the more I wanted to read. My Kindle wasn’t exactly glued to my hand but it might as well have been because it came everywhere with me. I just couldn’t bear to be parted from the book.
For me, ‘A Bloody Stiletto, Cold Lasagne & A Bestseller’ is extremely well written with strong characters, laugh out loud moments, drama and storylines that will make you gasp as well as make you want to laugh. That’s what happened to me anyway.
In short I bloody loved reading ‘A Bloody Stiletto, Cold Lasagne & A Bestseller’ and I would definitely recommend this author and this series to other readers. This book works perfectly well as a standalone novel but because I am a bit OCD and I like reading series’ in order, I will definitely be reading the first book in the series and then re-reading the second book. Hopefully by that time, the third book in the series might be ready for release………hint hint. The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is a very well deserved 5* out of 5*.
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